Wedding Video Music Copyright Laws

If you want to have ‘Bruno Mars – Marry You’ in your wedding video, then be prepared to pay €2,000 or more to license it.

It is hard to take; even though you paid for a song on iTunes, you then can’t use it for your wedding video.

Anytime you use someone else’s work, you need a specific license. A personal use license is generally what you get when you buy a song through a platform like iTunes or even physical copies.

Wedding video music copyright laws

Wedding videos are commercial projects and aren’t covered by a personal use license. It’s pretty straight forward, wedding video music copyright law means that even though you have a personal license for a song, and you want it in your wedding video, you would still need a commercial license.

YouTube will almost certainly flag your video, pretty much immediately, if you try to upload it with a popular song. So does Facebook. And it’s not just social media platforms you need to worry about, if a record company spots your video with their music, they are well within their rights to sue you and the video creator for damages.

But what if we don’t post it on social media?

We get that sometimes, and I’m sure it happens a lot to other video producers. It’s simply illegal regardless, and unethical. An artist has a right to be paid for their work.

Music licensing for our wedding videos costs around €100 to €150 and absorb this ourselves. We put a lot of thought and care into picking music that complements the story and emotion of our productions. It’s a creative process, so illegally slapping on Bruno Mars to one of our videos wouldn’t work anyway.

Legal options

We predominantly use Music Bed to find and license music. It’s not free, but it is vast. It ticks all the boxes for us. We get a great library of music for every type of video and we get to support some great artists.

We won’t work on projects that require illegal use of copyrighted music. So, if you see a video with a popular song in the background, just think to yourself – did this videographer pay around €2,000+ for this song?